#NoFilter: Leveraging Instagram to Increase Brand Recognition

Ali Glemser

With more than 200 million monthly active users and 55 million photos shared daily, Instagram has become one of the most popular social media apps today. Capitalizing on the popular trend of sharing visuals through social media, the completely photo/video based app has made the average smartphone user a skilled photographer with various editing features, including its famous filters.

Just like Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Snapchat, brands can join the Instagram community, too, and connect to their existing and potential audiences if they leverage the opportunities Instagram presents. Below are four high points from an article about Instagram in the Public Relations TACTICS October issue.

#Hashtags – Similar to Twitter, hashtags are used frequently on Instagram and are a great way to tag your content and enter it into multiple conversations. Research hashtag subjects your targeted audiences are using and incorporate those into your posts appropriately, while also branding your content with one or two unique hashtags of your own. Promote those unique hashtags across multiple platforms to bring various audiences into the conversation.

Quality over quantity – This shouldn’t be the first time you’ve heard this rule in regards to social media. If you are constantly posting irrelevant or poor content, you’re likely to be ignored or unfollowed. The same idea applies to posting on Instagram. Post images that are unique, clear and bright to start conversation and build engagement. Find your inner artistic photography skills with the app’s filters and editing options. Also, in an effort to stay relevant, but not annoying, a good rule to follow is to post once a day.

Captions are key – Take advantage of the ability to attach a caption with your photo, but make it easily digestible and conversational. Nobody wants to read your marketing material copied and pasted below every picture you post. Take this chance to show there are humans behind your Instagram account, and use a little humor when appropriate.

Identify influencers – As with other platforms, identify the people or other brands that are first adopters in your industry and engage with them. Follow them, like them, comment and share their images, as appropriate. Showing that you can play nice in the Instagram community sandbox will help spread your brand awareness.

In conclusion, post content that is visually engaging often enough to stay top of mind, but not so often that you clog people’s feeds with your brand. Stay relevant in industry conversations and differentiate yourself with hashtags. Most of all, share the love! Comment on and like your followers’ posts. Give your brand a human element by staying timely, relevant and engaging with your exiting and potential audiences.

Facebook Hashtags: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Ali Glemser

In an effort to ride the wave of Twitter’s hashtag craze, Facebook added the ability to use hashtags in status posts last June. How has that worked out for them? Well, how often do you use hashtags in your Facebook posts, or more importantly, how often do you click on hashtags you see used in other Facebook posts? If you answered never or hardly ever, then you would be among the majority of Facebook users.

That’s right. Hashtags have basically been a flop for the social media giant. In fact, certain research has shown that including hashtags in your posts decreases their viral reach. 

Brands are constantly updating content and starting conversations on both platforms, so why are users not interacting with hashtags on Facebook like they do on Twitter? The answer lies in how consumers interact with each platform.

Although Facebook may have millions of conversations taking place at any one moment like Twitter, the platform is designed so those conversations are compartmentalized between friends and fans, whereas a Twitter feed is one long stream of comments, ideas and opinions for any followers to see. For this reason, Twitter users, especially brands, use hashtags to stand out. The more clever or outrageous they are, the better. 

Also, Facebook was founded as a “personal” form of social media, encouraging users to post personal content, like pictures and status updates. Facebook users are less likely to start a conversation with a brand when they visited the platform to see pictures of their infant daughter-in-law or brother who is studying abroad. Brand conversations are easier to digest and participate in on Twitter’s platform because the feed moves faster and includes less personal information.

Needless to say, hashtags lend themselves to Twitter’s fast-paced conversation turnover, more so than Facebook’s feed of family’s photo albums and friends’ status updates. My prediction is we’ll see them fizzle out completely within the next year. So, skip creating witty hashtags for your brand’s Facebook page; instead, spend more time posting content like interesting photos and useful news for your fans to engage with and share.